dismissed EB-1A Case: Environmental And Chemical/Petroleum Engineering

U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
In Re: 16151379 
Appeal of Texas Service Center Decision 
Non-Precedent Decision of the 
Administrative Appeals Office 
Date: JUN. 07, 2021 
Form 1-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker (Extraordinary Ability) 
The Petitioner, a researcher focusing on environmental and chemical/petroleum engineering, seeks 
classification as an alien of extraordinary ability. See Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) section 
203(b)(l)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(l)(A). This first preference classification makes immigrant visas 
available to those who can demonstrate their extraordinary ability through sustained national or 
international acclaim and whose achievements have been recognized in their field through extensive 
documentation . 
The Director of the Texas Service Center denied the petition, concluding that the record did not 
establish that the Petitioner met the initial evidence requirements for the classification through receipt 
of a major , internationally recognized award or by meeting at least three of the evidentiary criteria at 
8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3). We initially summarily dismissed the Petitioner's appeal, but subsequently 
reopened it on service motion. 
In these proceedings, it is the Petitioner's burden to establish eligibility for the requested benefit. See 
Section 291 of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1361. Upon de nova review , we will dismiss the appeal. 
I. LAW 
Section 203(b )( 1) of the Act makes visas available to immigrants with extraordinary ability if: 
(i) the alien has extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or 
athletics which has been demonstrated by sustained national or international 
acclaim and whose achievements have been recognized in the field through 
extensive documentation, 
(ii) the alien seeks to enter the United States to continue work in the area of 
extraordinary ability, and 
(iii) the alien's entry into the United States will substantially benefit prospectively 
the United States. 
The term "extraordinary ability" refers only to those individuals in "that small percentage who have 
risen to the very top of the field of endeavor." 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(2). The implementing regulation 
at 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3) sets forth a multi-part analysis. First, a petitioner can demonstrate 
international recognition of his or her achievements in the field through a one-time achievement (that 
is, a major, internationally recognized award). If that petitioner does not submit this evidence, then 
he or she must provide sufficient qualifying documentation that meets at least three of the ten criteria 
listed at 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3)(i) - (x) (including items such as awards, published material in certain 
media, and scholarly articles). 
Where a petitioner meets these initial evidence requirements, we then consider the totality of the 
material provided in a final merits determination and assess whether the record shows sustained 
national or international acclaim and demonstrates that the individual is among the small percentage 
at the very top of the field of endeavor. See Kazarian v. USCIS, 596 F.3d 1115 (9th Cir. 20 I 0) 
( discussing a two-part review where the documentation is first counted and then, if fulfilling the 
required number of criteria, considered in the context of a final merits determination); see also 
Visinscaia v. Beers, 4 F. Supp. 3d 126, 131-32 (D.D.C. 2013); Rijalv. USCIS, 772 F. Supp. 2d 1339 
(W.D. Wash. 2011). 
TI. ANALYSIS 
The Petitioner earned a Ph.D. in environmental engineering fromc=]university in 2017, and at the 
time of filing was employed in the oil and gas industry as a research engineer focusing on flow 
assurance and water treatment. He indicates that he intends to continue pursuing research in these 
areas in the United States. 
A. Evidentiary Criteria 
Because the Petitioner has not indicated or established that he has received a major, internationally 
recognized award, he must satisfy at least three of the alternate regulatory criteria at 
8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3)(i)-(x). The Director found that the Petitioner met two of the evidentiary criteria 
at 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3)(i)-(x), relating to his authorship of scholarly articles and service as a judge 
of the work of others in his field. On appeal, the Petitioner asserts that he also meets the evidentiary 
criterion relating to original contributions of major significance to the field, and that the Director 
mischaracterized or ignored much of the evidence submitted in support of that criterion. After 
reviewing all of the evidence in the record, we agree with the Director's conclusions regarding the two 
criteria he found the Petitioner to have met, as there is ample evidence in the record of the Petitioner's 
authorship of scholarly articles and service as a peer reviewer for scientific journals. 
Regarding the third criteria claimed by the Petitioner, the Director's decision drew unsupported 
conclusions from the evidence of the Petitioner's contributions to his field and applied them 
inappropriately in the analysis. However, upon de nova review of the evidence, we conclude that the 
Petitioner has not established that he meets that criterion. 
Evidence of the alien's original scient[fic, scholarly, artistic, athletic, or business­
related contributions of major sign[ficance in the field. 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(3)(v) 
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In order to satisfy this criterion, a petitioner must establish that not only has he or she made original 
contributions, but that they have been of major significance in the field. For example, a petitioner may 
show that the contributions have been widely implemented throughout the field, have remarkably 
impacted or influenced the field, or have otherwise risen to a level of major significance. Visinscaia 
at 134. 
The evidence indicates that the Petitioner's contributions to his field fall into three main areas of 
research in the field of environmental and chemical/petroleum engineering. The first area concerns 
his development of an irrigation water management model while a student atl I University. 
I lofl I University submitted a reference letter on the Petitioner's 
behalf: indicating that he served as his undergraduate research advisor. 1 He describes the Petitioner's 
work in detail, and states that the Petitioner applied the model he developed to an arid region in China 
and reported his results in a paper published in Agricultural Water Management in 2013. I I 
Onotes that one of the papers which cite to this article tested the effectiveness of another irrigation 
model against the Petitioner's, showing that it served as a benchmark for future developments. 
Another reference letter which describes this research was submitted byl I of .... l ___ __. 
University of Science and Technology. Although he does not indicate how he became familiar with 
the Petitioner's work, he refers to another group of researchers who also compared the Petitioner's 
irrigation model to their own, and indicates that the Petitioner's published research had been cited on 
246 occasions at the time his letter was written. However, neither he no~ I describe how 
the performance of the Petitioner's model compared to that of other researchers, or the extent to which 
it influenced the development of these subsequent models. In additionJ ldoes not explain the 
relevance of the number of citations to the entirety of the Petitioner's published work as a measure of 
the contribution made by this specific research. 
The Petitioner also submitted several articles which cite to his paper in Agricultural Water 
Management. Some of these articles consider this paper as one of several employing various methods 
to model the management of irrigation. For example, an article in published in Journal of Hydrology 
in 2019 lists the Petitioner's as one of several "mathematical programming approaches" applied to 
water resource management, and does not single it out as particularly impactful. Similarly, a 2017 
paper in Agricultural Water Management cites the Petitioner's paper as an example of the use of 
,__ ______ __. programming, before going on to apply a different model. Another paper 
published in the same journal and year lists the Petitioner's as one of four "catchment water allocation 
tools." And a paper published in Energy Procedia in 2019 cites the Petitioner's paper and another in 
explaining the terms of a mathematical formula. This evidence shows that the Petitioner's approach 
and methods have served as a basis for comparison for other researchers, but does not establish that it 
stood out from similar research in terms of its significance to the field or was ultimately adopted and 
implemented on a widespread basis. 
A second focus of the Petitioner's research involved his contributions to a software product developed 
by th Universit and used b consortium members in the 
oil and gas industry. The Director of th .__ _ _. ~--------- wrote to confirm that the 
1 We have thoroughly reviewed all of the reference letters submitted by the Petitioner, including those not specifically 
mentioned in this decision. 
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Petitioner's work "improved upon the conventionail I model," and was incorporated 
into the I I software as "a set of compatible viral coefficients" which allowed it to 
be applicable to a wider range o~ I conditions. I I goes on to 
state thatL~"is employed by over 40 major oil and gas exploration and production companies ... " to 
"control and manage scale issues and save millions and millions of dollars every year." While this 
letter indicates that the Petitioner's work has been implemented in the oil and gas industry, I I I I does not state whether its inclusion in~ directly led to increased usage of this software, 
which had been previously developed by thec=J and was already in use by consortium members in 
the industry. 
The Petitioner's work in this as ect of his career also led to ublications in scientific journals and 
presentations at conferences,__ ___ ---.-----~----~----.--~iversity in the United Kingdom 
discusses the Petitioner's research in theL- _ _,-------"l--__Jcrystallization, and explains the 
limitations of previous models based upon~----~ He states that he "referenced [the 
Petitioner's] assertion of the importance of selecting the most accurate equilibrium constants" in his 
own work, and notes that his research "helped us complete our study and advanced the theoretical 
understanding ofl l of the whole industry." Although this letter confirms that this work 
contributed to the field of environmental and chemical engineering, and particularly to the D 
I I niche within that field, it does not show that it stood out from advances made by others in 
the field as being of major significance. 
Another researcher who cited to the Petitioner's research regardin~ I is 
.__ ________ ........,who writes that he works as a I lengineer in the oil and gas 
industry. He indicates that the Petitioner "substantially improved thel I model," and that 
he and his colleagues used the Petitioner's methods and expanded upon them "to look at ways of 
developing a more reliable tool for P.redictin~ , I" Although he goes on to 
state that the Petitioner's "im rove odel has become the new industry-wide standard, where 
it is known as the~-----~ this statement contradicts! I's letter which 
indicates that the Petitioner's work was incorporated into D which was already widely used in the 
industry. Further, while both of these letters confirm that other researchers have built upon the 
Petitioner's work, and provide details about how it has impacted their own research to some extent, 
they do not indicate that it has remarkably impacted the environmental and chemical engineering field. 
The record also includes other evidence of citation to the Petitioner's work in .... l _____ _.l This 
includes partial copies of several articles which cite to the Petitioner's work. One such paper was 
presented at the 20190ntemational Conference! I Chemistry, and cites three papers co­
authored by the Petitioner. The authors use the Petitioner and his colleagues at 9university as 
examples of "several researchers" generating '----=---.---~andl conditions to 
develop improved! I models, but they critique this work by noting that the full details of 
experimental methods are not disclosed. In addition, despite the Petitioner's papers comprising three 
of the six articles cited in this paper, the partial copy of this paper submitted does not demonstrate that 
the authors relied upon his work to support their own or reach conclusions. 
Another example of an article in the record which cites the Petitioner's published research in this niche 
was published in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering in 2019. Here the authors indicate 
that the Petitioner and his colleagues are among "many researchers [who] identify! las 
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being one of the main driving forces fo~~-------~t' and use data from one of their papers 
to perform a simulation. 
These and the other papers submitted show that other researchers have referred to and built upon the 
Petitioner's published research i~ I prediction and prevention. While they offer deeper 
insight into the impact of the Petitioner's work beyond simple citation figures and statistics, these 
examples do not show that his work was unusually or remarkably influential on other researchers or 
otherwise rose to the level of major significance. 
Regarding citation figures and statistics, on appeal the Petitioner asserts that the Director was not 
justified in considering figures from his Google Scholar profile as diminished in probability, and did 
not give consideration to statistics from Microsoft Academic and Clarivate Analytics. Although the 
Petitioner acknowledges that the article published in Scientometrics in 2014, which he submitted in 
response to the Director's RFE, states that citation figures from Google Scholar should not be used for 
bibliometric analysis due to "numerous deficiencies for research evaluation," he nevertheless defends 
his reliance on the analysis from Microsoft Academic which is based upon those figures. That report 
indicates that the Petitioner's "citation percentile" and "publication percentile" are both above 99%, 
but does not explain the methodology used to arrive at these figures or their meaning. We also note 
that the portion of the report labelled "areas of research" includes systems engineering and "natural 
resource economics," subjects which are not clearly related to the Petitioner's specific research, but 
does not include chemical engineering, petroleum engineering o~ I In addition, the 
Petitioner does not explain how this report, which considers citations to all of his work, is relevant to 
the consideration of specific research contributions he has made in niches such as irrigation water 
management and k prediction and prevention. For all of these reasons, we do not find 
the report from Microsoft Academic to be relevant to the issue of whether the Petitioner has made 
original contributions of major significance to his field, whether in this aspect of his work or in the 
others considered in this decision. 
Turning to the evidence from Clarivate Analytics, the Petitioner submitted evidence showing 
percentile rankings for citations to papers published in several research fields in specific years as of 
2019. He highlights the figures in the "Environment/Ecology" field, and the citation figures in the 
10th percentile for the years 2013, 2015, and 2017. We note that the Scientometrics article indicates 
that the relative citation rates given by Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) are based upon 
citation figures from its own database, the Web of Science. However, the record does not include 
complete citation figures for each of the Petitioner's published works from the Web of Science, only 
a summary of the total citations from 14 unidentified articles published by the Petitioner. Since the 
complete citation figures in the record from Google Scholar cannot be reliably compared to the relative 
citation rates in the record, this evidence does not show that the number of citations to the Petitioner's 
research are within any particular percentile within his field, or that they indicate that his published 
work remarkably impacted or influenced the field. 
The Petitioner also submitted other evidence regarding this aspect of his research in response to the 
Director's RFE. This included emails from other researchers seeking assistance in applying the model 
developed in part by the Petitioner. For example, an email from researchers at the University of 
I ltd I states that his research "onl I has been of great 
help to us," and includes an email from him to the Petitioner seeking assistance in answering the 
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researchers' questions about his model. Another email sent directly to the Petitioner from the 
representative of a company developing '---~-------' seeks a meeting with him regarding 
"technology gaps" in this area. These emails show that the Petitioner is considered to be an expert in 
I !prediction and prevention, and also confirm some interest in tools which he developed 
or improved upon from researchers in academia and industry. But these examples, when considered 
with the other evidence regarding the Petitioner's contributions relating tol I prediction 
and prevention, are insufficient to establish that his contributions were of major significance to the 
field of environmental and chemical engineering. 
The third aspect of the Petitioner's research which he asserts is an original contribution of major 
significance concerns two software modules he helped to develop to reduce the amount of freshwater 
needed td I in oil wells. The record includes a reference letter froml I 
a principal investi ator atl I where the Petitioner completed a three-month graduate research 
internship. explains that the Petitioner provided "invaluable contributions" to a project 
focused on "optimizino-- ___ __,_ontrol in thel t She explains that he developed one 
software module, the Monitor Module, and helped to develop a theoretical model called thel I 
Module, both of which allow the company to determine the amount of freshwater necessary to prevent 
I ~ I !further states that the use of these models greatly reduced water usage and 
has savedl !millions of dollars, and that the project was nominated for a company award and 
resulted in a conference paper. 
While this letter demonstrates thatl I implemented the Petitioner's work for this project, the 
record does not include evidence showing that either the software modules generated interest beyond 
the company to the broader oil and gas industry, or otherwise constituted a contribution of major 
significance in the field of environmental anr chemical engjneerin,. We note that the reference letters 
fror land! I of._ ________ __,_ also mention the Petitioner's work 
for I on this project, but neither of them indicate that they have first-hand knowledge of the 
project or the software modules developed. In addition, althoug~ I indicates that this paper 
was selected as a keynote talk for the conference, the record does not show that it has been frequently 
cited by other researchers in their own published work. 
After review of the evidence and for the reasons discussed above, we conclude that the Petitioner has 
not established that he meets this criterion. 
III. CONCLUSION 
The Petitioner has not submitted the required initial evidence of either a one-time achievement or 
documents that meet at least three of the ten criteria. As a result, we need not provide the type of final 
merits determination referenced in Kazarian, 596 F.3d at 1119-20. Nevertheless, we advise that we 
have reviewed the record in the aggregate, concluding that it does not support a finding that the 
Petitioner has established the acclaim and recognition required for the classification sought. 
The Petitioner seeks a highly restrictive visa classification, intended for individuals already at the top 
of their respective fields, rather than for individuals progressing toward the top. USCIS has long held 
that even athletes performing at the major league level do not automatically meet the "extraordinary 
ability" standard. Matter of Price, 20 I&N Dec. 953,954 (Assoc. Comm'r 1994). Here, the Petitioner 
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has not shown that the significance of his work is indicative of the required sustained national or 
international acclaim or that it is consistent with a "career of acclaimed work in the field" as 
contemplated by Congress. H.R. Rep. No. 101-723, 59 (Sept. 19, 1990); see also section 203(b )(l)(A) 
of the Act. Moreover, the record does not otherwise demonstrate that the Petitioner has garnered 
national or international acclaim in the field, and that he is one of the small percentage who has risen 
to the very top of the field of endeavor. See section 203(b )(1 )(A) of the Act and 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(h)(2). 
For the reasons discussed above, the Petitioner has not demonstrated his eligibility as an individual of 
extraordinary ability. The appeal will be dismissed for the above stated reasons, with each considered 
as an independent and alternate basis for the decision. 
ORDER: The appeal is dismissed. 
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